


She's Our Teacher, Charlie Brown

by GE72



Category: Peanuts
Genre: Gen, Humor, POV First Person, Parent Teacher Conference, References to TV specials, References to comic strip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-17 14:53:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18100718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GE72/pseuds/GE72
Summary: A middle school teacher meets with the parents of Peppermint Patty, Marcie, Schroeder, Linus and Lucy, and of course, good ol' Charlie Brown, to discuss their academic and social progress.





	She's Our Teacher, Charlie Brown

Hello there. I’m Mrs. Littlejohn. Glad you can make it today. And how are you. Mr. Reichardt? Good.

Anyway, your daughter Patricia, as you might know, is not the most studious person I’ve come across. She has come to class, not carrying any books or anything else for that matter, then trying to borrow paper and pencils from other students. In fact, there are times that she has come across as not liking school at all. She’d rather be outside playing baseball. And there have been times when she just doesn’t listen at all. Once, she heard about a gifted program, and she thought it was about getting gifts. For a time, I thought she had attention deficit disorder. I’ve brought it up with other teachers, and they say Patricia – and these are their words, not mine – doesn’t have attention deficit disorder, she’s just stupid.

I know you’re a single father trying to raise her on your own, so it must be very difficult. I know you’re trying to be there for her. There’s also something else I’d like to ask you about. Does Patricia have a motherly influence in her life, since her mother passed away? I ask because I’ve heard whispers about Patricia from other students, mostly girls, and it’s not nice. They seem to think that Patricia is not really into boys. Yes, I’ve heard about her feelings she has about – oh, you know about Charlie Brown? But the rumors persist. Well, for one, Marcie is her only friend, and they hang out together a lot. There’s other things too. Are you aware, that last semester, Patricia tried out for the basketball team. The boys basketball team. She thought the girls basketball team wasn’t competitive enough for her. And when someone suggested she try out for the softball team instead of the baseball team, she got really upset. She thought softball was a sissy sport. The softball players said fine, they didn’t want her on the team anyway.

I’ll try to be more understanding of her situation, but please remind her that she needs to listen in class and to come prepared. Make sure she leaves home with her books and notepad, as well as a pencil or two. And let her know that being a girl is okay.  
__________________________________________________

Hello, Mister and Mrs. Carlin. Take a seat. 

I’m very impressed with your daughter’s Marcie’s academic record. Straight A’s since birth, it seems like. You must be very proud of her. Yes, well, she admits she does to having some pressure keeping up her grades. I know you just want to the best for her.

What exactly are you worried about? Oh, her friendship with Patricia Reichardt. You’re afraid that some of Patricia’s personality might be rubbing off on your daughter? Yes, I know that Patricia is not the most academically grounded person in the world, much less Santa Rosa. You’re afraid that she’s a negative influence on Marcie? And what? You’re hearing rumors about Marcie and Patricia? They’re only rumors, that’s all. I’ve seen Marcie talking with Linus Van Pelt and Charlie Brown in the hallway between classes, so you have nothing to worry about.

I assume everything is fine at home. Good. What? She's terrible in the kitchen? How so? Oh, last Easter, you asked her to boil some eggs and she did. Oh, she cracked the eggs before putting them in the water. She hasn’t grasped the concept of hard boiled eggs still being in the shell.

Well, they still have home economic courses at the high school, so maybe Marcie can learn something there. She also has lots to learn here at the middle school…..  
_____________________________________________

Thanks for coming today. I’d like to talk about your son, Mr. and Mrs. Schroeder.

Your son is very intelligent, and from what I understand, very musically inclined. I hear during the lunch hour here at school, he goes into the music room and plays the piano. It’s a very lovely sound, especially when he plays Beethoven. Is he a musical prodigy? I ask because he plays like a virtuoso. Oh, he’s naturally gifted. He plays other composers as well? Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Mozart….oh not him. Mozart was too commercial? Maybe in his day, or when the movie about him came out.

In class, I also he’s very passionate about various subjects and not just Beethoven and music. He’s a very good student and a good friend to most everyone. Well, most everyone. I once saw him getting into an argument with Lucy Van Pelt about Beethoven. What? He put her into her place. Given what I know about Lucy Van Pelt, that’s hard to do.

Thanks for coming today. And tell your son to keep up the good work, not just in class, but also the piano as well. By the way, can he play either Keith Emerson or Jon Lord?  
_______________________________________________

Mr. and Mrs. Van Pelt, take a seat. 

I have to know something about Linus and Lucy. How did they become so polar opposite of each other? Linus is so calm and collected, and Lucy is, well, how should I put this….volatile? Crabby? Oh, you wonder about that too? No, I’d rather not use that word.

Well, I have seen Lucy at her crabbiest. Your daughter wants everything her way, or else. Trust me, I’ve seen the “or else.” She yells, screams, threatens, she runs roughshod over everything and everyone to get her way, and it gets worse when it doesn’t go her way. Sorry if I’m overexaggerating….Oh, I’m not?

The thing is, what she wants is everyone else wants. She’s wants to have the good things in life. I heard her say that she wants her life to be full of ups and ups, nothing down. I told her that in life, you can’t have the ups without the downs. She kind of lost it, until I told her if she lost her temper in front of me like that again, it would be detention for the rest of the school year.

As for Linus, he’s a very good student. Straight A’s. He seems to know more than he lets on. He quotes from the Bible a lot, as well as some other authors I don’t teach in class. I know about that so called security blanket he carries around. He’s cut back on it, you say? Only at home and vacations, I see. I also know about that crush he had on a teacher back at the elementary school. I guess the Mary Kay LeTourneau incident had an effect on that.

Your son seems to be wise beyond his years. How is that? You’re still trying to figure that out too? I wish children his age could be more like him. Without the blanket of course.

Well, I don’t know what it is about them, but you must be doing something right. Whatever it is, keep doing it.

___________________________________________

Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Brown. Take a seat. 

How are you doing? That’s good. I’d like to talk to you about your son Charlie. He’s a good student, though his grades don’t always reflect it. He’s not flunking, mind you, it’s that he’s a little erratic. Sometimes, he does great, other times not so much. He once turned in a report on the failure of the banks in the last Bush administration, and he got an A on it. He told me he has this fascination with failure. If I ask him to write a report on the current administration, he could very well get an A on that as well. 

I once heard that he went on a field trip to a museum in San Francisco, and wrote a report on what was there. But a teacher who was chaperoning the trip said that Charlie and a couple of other students got lost and went into the wrong door. Turns out it was a grocery store. Charlie somehow got an A on the report. I don’t understand how Charlie could not tell the difference between a museum and a grocery store. Yes, I heard it was a Trader Joe’s, and they have items there you don’t see every day, but still….

There’s been other times, where he seems overwhelmed by his studies. Other students grasp the subject matter very well, but he doesn’t seem to. I don’t think it’s a learning disability, I think it’s something else. 

Things are fine at home? That’s good. What? It’s that he’s easily gets down when things don’t go his way, and things often don’t go his way. It makes him sad, and he can’t seem to break out of the cycle. Yet he persists, believing that it will turn around for him. That’s what keeps me going in this job. There are students worth fighting for to make a difference in their lives, and your son is one of them. Someone like Charlie Brown could become someone great if someone can make a difference in their life, whether it be a teacher or one of his friends.

Thanks for meeting with me, Mr. and Mrs. Brown. You have to get to another meeting about your daughter Sally at the elementary school? What is she like? Oh, really? Well, tell her everyone has to go to school, it’s a passage of childhood.


End file.
